Echoes
by Vayleen
Summary: It is said that you never forget your first love and Emma knows it's true. Sometimes she dreams of Neal. Sometime after Henry's twelfth birthday, the dreams begin to change, like echoes of a life she never lived. Neal/Emma


Emma is pregnant, and she dreams about Neal often. She caresses her abdomen, lying on the bed in her jail cell, wishing for a home she will never have. She strokes the tiny foot pushing up against her lowest rib and gently moves it back down. The baby shifts inside her, trying to find a better angle to stretch out his limbs, and Emma starts to smile in that halfway point between sleep and awake.

In her dream, Neal is shifting around in the backseat of their Volkswagen beetle. They're sleeping in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Lincoln. Neal tosses and turns, like he always does when they have to sleep in the car, trying to position his long limbs so that he's not cramped inside that tiny space. Emma is curled up in the passenger seat with her feet on the center console. She smiles softly, pretending to sleep as she watches Neal try to put one stretched out leg over the top of the driver's seat and the other against the window, a frustrated look on his face.

Emma remembers that this was just another of the many times she had the urge to kiss her friend. Lion-heart Neal Cassidy, funny and kind and ridiculously adorable with those long dark curls falling into his eyes.

Since it is a dream, Emma can crawl out of that seat and brush that hair out of his warm hazel eyes, trace the side of his face before cradling it with her palm, and press her lips to his. But it is a dream - this moment was before Neal became her lover, before they kiss for the first time, and the reality of it pulls Emma back into lucidity. She thinks, as she looks at him, that this will never work out. She is a homeless teenager and she can barely take care of herself, so how can she let herself be a burden to another person?

Emma is thinking about this as she is pulled the waking world, alone in her jail cell, angry, dejected, and still so hopelessly in love with a man who abandoned her. She realizes again, moving a hand up to feel where the baby is stretching, that she can't be a mother. It is not until she desperately reaches for her baby after giving birth that Emma decides to do the selfish thing, the wrong thing, and keep her son. Their life would be hard, she might be a burden to him someday, but Emma loves this baby in her arms _so much_ and she clings to that love and this child. She smiles down at him and marvels at how the series of choices, coincidences, and uncontrollable circumstances that make up her life until that moment brought her son to her. And she cannot regret a single thing.

* * *

It starts after Henry turns twelve. There is a shift in both of them somehow, in the way they move or talk, the way they express themselves. Henry doesn't seem to laugh as much and neither does Emma. It's like a whole other lifetime of emotion that doesn't belong to her is stored in every cell of her body. Muscle memory sending feedback to her brain that doesn't make sense. Emma feels burdened by it, but she tries to hide this reaction from her son. Henry is going through something too, and if Emma only has enough energy to take care of one person, it is always going to be Henry.

They are living in Boston when Emma finds Henry sleep walking through their apartment, calling for her.

"Mom? Mom!"

He sounds so desperate and Emma is instantly awake, flinging her covers back and rushing out to him, but stops and approaches cautiously when she sees he's not awake, not really. "Henry?" She walks up to him slowly.

Henry starts at the sound of Emma's voice and his eyes suddenly focus on her face. He looks confused and surprised to see her, and Emma catches it briefly before it fades from his eyes completely. Disappointment. He was looking for someone else. And then his face twists into something else and he reaches desperately for her and Emma wraps her arms around him.

Emma does not understand the grief in Henry's eyes, and she will do anything to fix it, but all she can do is comfort him.

"What were you dreaming about, kid?" Emma asks softly, stroking his hair.

Henry shakes his head against her shoulder and Emma squeezes him tighter. "I don't know," he answers, "I don't remember."

Emma tucks him into bed and wearily pads back into living room, running her hands down her face. She settles on the couch where she has the best vantage point of Henry's bedroom door. She only closes her eyes once they are so heavy it's impossible to keep them open.

Sometimes Emma dreams about a young woman with dark hair and a sweet smile, looking over at her with her heart in her eyes and Emma's heart aches. She dreams about a tall man looking down at her with the same eyes she sees in the mirror. He cradles her head in his large hand and holds her, kissing her temple. Emma wants them to hold her, smile at her, love her, and never leave. She wants to lock herself up so her feelings don't scare her anymore.

But that night she dreams about Neal Cassidy.

Emma dreams she sees Neal playing swords with Henry. Neal positions Henry's hand on the handle of the wooden blade and demonstrates an overhead offensive move that Henry immediately practices on his father. Neal laughs and jumps away and counters his son's strikes easily, and even tries a counterattack that Henry, ever the quick and observant learner, blocks using a move he just saw Neal use.

This happens in the span of mere moments and Emma is struck by how similar the two of them are. Henry always reminds her of Neal, in the way he laughs, the way his eyes twinkle, the way the hair curls around Henry's ears. So much like Neal, but now, with them right next to each other, it causes a lump to form in Emma's chest and it rises to her throat so she needs to force herself to swallow.

Henry looks tired and happy, and he reaches for Neal and hugs him. Emma realizes that this is the same too, how they both throw everything they are into an embrace with wide smiles, wide open arms, and open hearts.

It is this moment that Emma remembers she's only dreaming. Neal has never met their son. There was a time when the two of them were younger, before Henry reached school age, and they lived near a beach in Tallahassee. Emma romanticized the idea that she could find Neal, that he was waiting for them there, and they would be a family, but that was a long time ago. Emma has grown wiser since then and carefully deflected any of Henry's questions regarding who his father is.

But in this dream, Neal catches her eye as Henry lets go of him and moves away. Emma approaches him as Henry slings his backpack over his shoulder and walks back to school, waving to both of them as he does.

Neal waves back, smiling, but his posture is stiff and Emma realizes there is no open access of affection between the two of them in this dream. It irked her because if she was going to dream about Neal being a part of their lives, she didn't want this awkward, uncomfortable feeling that she didn't have a claim on him when he (just might) still have one on her.

"I gave up on you," Emma tells him. "Even after you left me, left us in jail to serve for your crimes, I thought that it would be better for us to find each other. And I could be angry, and heartbroken, but we would be some semblance of a family. And it would be better than wallowing in a life of what-ifs, without you," Emma takes a deep breath, and tries to control her voice before it breaks. "But I couldn't find you in Tallahassee. So I gave up on you."

She expects the dream Neal to respond like he might of when she knew him well, when he was young, twenty-four, and hers. But this Neal has cut his dark curls short, this Neal has lines around his eyes and mouth, and his eyes carry the scars and experiences that can only get there from another decade of living. A decade without Emma and Henry in his life. This Neal smiles sadly at her and says "I understand. There is a lot of history between us, Em. I wouldn't expect anything of you after what I put you through. What's really important is Henry. I know you're worried, but you should know that I will be here for him. Anything less would be impossible," And he turns to look at where their son was a moment before. Emma keeps her eyes on Neal, not believing completely, but wanting to.

"You should know though," he says. And he reaches for her. Something in the dream changed, and Emma hears something like rushing water as the dream starts to break. For a crazy moment, she thinks Neal is real. His hand wraps around the back of her neck and he pulls her forward until their foreheads are almost touching. It is a gesture so familiar to her, something he did hundreds of times when they were young, and Emma feels a broken happiness from his closeness swelling inside her before she can control it.

"I'm never going to stop fighting for you," Neal says. "I will see you two again."

* * *

Emma's dreams fade from her consciousness immediately upon waking, like there was something inside her lingering and pushing the images away, forcefully insisting they didn't belong there, leaving nothing but vague and indescribable feelings behind. But not long after her dream, Emma and Henry move to Manhattan. This in itself is not unusual - Emma needs to move often because of the nature of her work. But she can't shake the feeling that somehow moving to Manhattan feels like moving closer to something she can't name.

Henry loves the city immediately. He's already decided the best place to get bagels and pizza and pie within the radius of their loft before they have been living there for a week. Emma wraps herself up in his enthusiasm because it is the first time Henry has seemed genuinely happy in months.

It doesn't take long for the novelty of the move to begin to wear off, after a routine of school and extracurricular activities settle in, and the shadows start returning to Henry's eyes. Emma feels it too, a deep-set lingering anxiousness in her bones that she should be looking for _something_ in that huge city, but she can't remember what. But the bustling, busy atmosphere of Manhattan is just distracting enough so Emma can push it from her mind.

The anxiousness comes roaring to life one hot summer day, when Emma and Henry are eating at a juice bar, at an outdoor table in the Upper East Side.

"I want to know about my Dad," Henry says, a determined edge in his voice and Emma knows her son will fight her this time if he thinks he needs to.

Not willing to give in, Emma tells Henry what she always tells him. "Henry, you know everything I know. Your Dad died rescuing people from a horrible fire while I was in jail. He's a hero." Emma wonders if she believes the lie the more she tells it. Thinking of Neal as a hero used to nauseate her. Now, for some reason, she really wants to believe it, and she wants Henry to believe it too.

"I know you're lying," Henry says, his mouth set in a line. "You're not the only one that can spot a lie, Mom. Sometimes other people can too."

Emma appraises her son and decides lying to him isn't worth it anymore. Henry will resent her if she keeps doing it and that is the last thing she wants. "Your Dad wasn't a firefighter."

"I know that much."

"But I told you the truth when I said he was funny. And brave. And he did like pumpkin pie." Emma takes a deep breath. "But he was a criminal. Like me. Except I went to jail and he didn't."

"Did he know about me?"

"I didn't even know about you when I first went to jail, Henry."

"And he never came back?"

"No," Emma says. "He never came back."

She sees Henry struggle with the same emotions Emma struggles with whenever she thinks about Neal Cassidy. And she hates it so much that part of her wishes she kept lying to him. She reminds herself that Henry deserves to know the truth and that her son is stronger than she thinks he is, stronger than she is sometimes. Henry has a faith that she envies.

"Okay," he finally says, "But do you know...do you know if he's...still alive?"

The question throws Emma off balance. It was a simple question. She doesn't know if Neal is alive, but she assumes that he is. But suddenly there is an unshakable sense of dread and grief inside of her, like she _lost_ Neal in a different way than him just breaking her heart and leaving her to serve time. She feels like she lost Neal is a terribly permanent way and she doesn't know why.

"No," Emma says so quietly it's almost a whisper.

Henry notices the look on his mother's face, and Emma is relieved when he drops the subject and just stirs his juice with a plastic straw. But Emma knows from the contemplative look on Henry's face that the subject will come up again. She hopes she will be better prepared.

It occurs to her later, as she's falling asleep in the living room chair while reading, watching the stairs to the loft in case Henry starts sleep walking again, that there was nothing stopping her from just looking for Neal Cassidy again. At least she will know if he is alive somewhere, living a life, maybe in jail for grand theft, maybe working in an office, maybe raising two kids somewhere in the Midwest. The last thought makes her feel a green feeling she does not want to name, so instead she resolves to do an internet search first thing in the morning, but nothing too detailed. She tries to ignore the sinking feeling that she will not find anything, even if she tries...

* * *

Emma is running down a dark alley in McAllen, Texas. She's clinging to a box of cookies and one of those cheap toolkits grocery stores sell next to auto care supplies. Neal and Emma got caught shop lifting from one of those ridiculously huge corporate grocery stores, and are chased out by security. When it turns into an all-out police chase, Emma panics, and separates from Neal by turning left when he turns right, thinking it would be easier to lose them if they split up and knowing she can double back and catch up with him.

An hour later, Emma is making her way back to their yellow bug, which is parked several blocks away from the store they hit. She abandoned the cookies, but stubbornly held onto the tools because she knows they are what Neal really needs to fix their car.

She is embarrassed that she thinks of it as _their_ car, _their_ home. Her crush on Neal is getting out of hand, developing into something she really doesn't want to examine because she is sure he doesn't feel the same. Emma knows Neal _likes_ her, but something more? It is too much to hope for after a lifetime of trying to love people who just thought of her as a burden in the end. Even though with him she felt closer to home than she has her entire life.

When she rounds another corner, she sees him, pacing up and down the block in his hooded sweatshirt and faded jeans. He is as dirty as she is, but he still looks beautiful and Emma has another swell of that emotion she keeps trying to bury. When Neal sees her, he starts running in her direction. Emma sees he is angry and holds up the stolen toolbox as a peace offering.

"I got the tools-" she starts. But Neal grabs her and pulls her into such a tight embrace that she squeaks, breathless, and the toolbox falls to the pavement. Neal is unconcerned about the tools now littering the street as he clings to Emma.

"I thought I lost you. I thought you were caught-" Neal's voice catches and he stops talking. Emma is held so tight that her glasses start riding up her face and she can feel his heartbeat, fast and frantic. "Don't...don't run from me, Emma. Not without it being a part of the plan, okay? I just...I can't lose you. Not you."

"Okay." She finally wraps her arms around his waist and closes her eyes, letting him hold her. It feels good to be held this tight by Neal. He starts rocking a little, and he's running a hand through her hair, wrapping locks of it around his fingers. By now, this kind of hug should feel awkward if they were only friends, but Emma doesn't want to let go. That emotion is coming back, but this time it made her feel warm and lose, like being under the hot sun.

Finally, Emma lifts her face to look at him. Neal is looking at her strangely and Emma feels her breathing increase. His eyes are wide and dilated and he's so close. He breathes out and it tickles her skin, making her shiver. Her eyes dart to his mouth before quickly returning back to his eyes, and she has a fraction of a second to think about what's happening before Neal is leaning down to kiss her and Emma is eagerly meeting him halfway to press her lips to his.

The kiss is soft and gentle. It's brief, and Neal pulls away right when Emma is ready to lean into him further and mold their bodies together. He swallows, and looks at her so hungrily that Emma feels sparks run up her spine. He begins to pull away, looking down and closing his eyes, but Emma steps back into his arms before he can drop them from her shoulders. She grabs the lapels of his leather jacket and tries to force him to look at her.

"Neal?" she pleads, angling her head so she can see his downturned face better. "Look at me. Please?"

Neal opens his eyes and he looks so sad, so scared, and Emma understands because Neal is as lost as she is and the idea that he might want her as much as she wants him is terrifying. But she wants, oh how she wants, and Emma thinks maybe _this time_ a wish might come true.

"I'm not going to leave you," Emma whispers. "Never, Neal. I-I…"

The words get stuck in her throat as she stutters through them, but they hang charged in the air between them, and the implication of Emma's unspoken words seem to clear some of the turmoil in Neal. Encouraged, Emma breathes in deeply and exhales out the rest of her heart into Neal's keeping.

"I love you."

Neal looks amazed and his hands run slowly down her shoulders to her waist, pulling her closer, and Emma closes her eyes and wraps her arms around his neck. "Emma," he whispers, low and husky, and Emma feels the charge in the air, the elements, whatever invisible line that holds them together, wrap around them as their lips meet again.

The kiss starts like the first, but escalates as they get lost in the warmth of each other. Emma moves her hands from his neck to cup his face so she can get a better angle and Neal moves his arms to bend her at the ribcage so they can reach each other better. The kiss is slow, but languid and intimate and so wonderful, better than she imagined, and she knows Neal is a taste she will never get tired of.

They startle out of the kiss when four of the streetlamps nearby pop, flicker, and go dark. Emma looks back at one of the streetlamps, still loosely wrapped in Neal's arms, and the sickening feeling that this is just a memory she's dreaming about settles over her. _No, no,_ she thinks, because she wants this to be real, but it's not because she knows it already happened. She turns back to the Neal Cassidy in her dreams, and he's staring at her, waiting for her to say something.

"I miss you." Emma tries not to cry. "I need to find you, and I don't understand why I feel like I can't. Why I feel like I _lost_ you-"

He makes reassuring shushing noises and wipes the escaped tears from her face with his fingers. "I'm not dead. I'm not really lost. I'm finding my way back to you and I always will find my way back to you. Both of you. Remember what you said? Family always finds each other."

"How?" Emma demands, skeptical to the very last. "You can't make promises you can't keep."

"My unshakable faith renewed by the unshakable faith of our son," Neal says. "We'll find each other, Em. We always do." He pulls her close again and Emma lets herself be held. "Emma," he whispers, "we're almost home."

Emma closes her eyes and opens them again to find herself in her loft in Manhattan. The dream is fading away quickly, like it always does, but she clings to the last thing Neal said before she falls asleep again. _Almost home._

* * *

The End


End file.
